The Boston University women’s lacrosse team will play only four more games in the regular season, facing three more Patriot League opponents. A neck-and-neck contest against the United States Naval Academy on Saturday ended in 15-14 loss for the Terriers (5-7, 3-3 Patriot League). BU head coach Liz Robertshaw stressed the importance of her team cleaning up fixable mistakes going forward to get into the Patriot League Tournament.
“We need to focus on ourselves and getting rid of these silly turnovers and also mental mistakes,” said Robertshaw.
Navy (10-4, 5-1 Patriot League) leads the league in assists, points and draw controls. They challenged the Terriers to battle back and forth until the last shot of the game. The Terriers’ ability to keep up with solid competition proves their capability to excel in their remaining Patriot League games against the College of the Holy Cross, the United States Military Academy and American University. But in close games, limiting controllable mistakes can be key to final outcome.
“When the players look at film they’re going to see, ‘Oh, there’s that moment that I jogged behind a cutter, number 4 catches it and scores a game winner. That’s that moment that I just didn’t feed with intensity and that’s a knock down, or that’s that moment that I didn’t work hard on the ride, that’s a turnover,” Robertshaw said.
Offensively, Boston’s midfield and attack is composed of versatile players who can contribute to the scoring routine. On Saturday, seven different Terriers contributed goals.
“I like the fact that we have a lot of scoring looks,” Robertshaw said.
However, Robertshaw would like to see more consistency from players who have proven themselves to be scoring threats thus far this season.
Junior attacker Mickenzie Larivee led the scoring against Navy with four goals, recording a hat trick early in the first half. Junior attacker Avery Donahoe, who was just named Patriot League Attacker of the Week, recorded a career-high six goals in the Terriers’ victory against Lafayette College last week, and two goals against Navy.
“There are still some players who could step up a little better offensively. We have Avery going six goals one game then two goals, I need her to consistently be scoring five goals because she’s capable of doing that. I think the same thing to be had for Liz Jayne, two goals today but if I need her to have four she has got to have four,” Robertshaw said.
Freshman attacker Kailey Conry, one of the rookies making an impact for the Terriers this year, led BU with five assists. Her role in playmaking will be crucial for the Terriers going into postseason play.
“[She] has great field vision. That’s what she was recruited to do. She’s a freshman so she’s going to make mistakes, but I still think she needs to play better. Even with that being said she had five assists so I think that’s pretty solid,” Robertshaw said.
Robertshaw also stressed that her team must be prepared to make adjustments based on their circumstances in each game.
“[Our defense] needs to change their game based on the referees,” said Robertshaw.
In the Navy game, BU allowed six free position shots, which were taken advantage of. Referees can play a hand in limiting aggressive defense with their judgement of fouls.
Going forward, the Terriers are preparing for their next game at Holy Cross (6-8, 1-5 Patriot League) on Wednesday and working to control the mental mistakes to propel them into the postseason.
“We just have to clean up our game,” Robertshaw said.
